Shanghai, China's virtually crowded city, is looking for ways to use a metaverse in public services over the next five years.

Shanghai Municipal Committee of Economy and Information Technology'due south five-year evolution plan for the electronic data manufacture listed four frontiers for exploration, and one of them is the metaverse.

According to a CNBC report, the paper chosen for promoting the metaverse'due south use in public services, business offices, social leisure, industrial manufacturing, product safety and electronic games. The commission plans to encourage further study and development of underlying technologies, such every bit sensors, real-time interactions and blockchain technology.

Communist china'due south interest in new technology has been unwavering in recent years, and its efforts to institute a key depository financial institution digital currency (CBDC) and its use of digital biometric hardware wallets for the virtual yuan have cemented it as a leader in the issuance of a CBDC.

In March, China'south State Quango released its five-year evolution plan that included many of these same fronts for exploration. As reported past Cointelegraph, the term "blockchain" was used for the first time in China'south 14th five-year plan, a document that outlines the country'southward economic goals for the adjacent v years, which runs from 2022 through 2025.

Related: Chinese companies commence on a metaverse trademark race

The metaverse has become an surface area of interest for many major companies in contempo months. In October, Facebook inverse its proper name to Meta in order to bank on the popularity of the term metaverse.

Despite the People's Banking concern of People's republic of china's warning on metaverse and nonfungible tokens in November, over 1,000 Chinese businesses have filed tens of thousands of trademark applications that reference the term. More than than 1,360 Chinese businesses accept applied for eight,534 trademarks, according to the Southward China Morning Post.

Chinese companies are in the process of developing metaverse technologies, with Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba among those aggressively working on related projects. Terminal week, Baidu debuted its XiRang metaverse app, which volition fully launch in half-dozen years.